56 comments:

The Neanderthal admixture finding was no big deal. Modern Eurasians have 1 to 4% Neanderthal admixture and Modern Africans probably have a higher level of admixture from local archaic hominims. The big question is whether this admixture is linked to anything useful.

Upcoming news this year:

- Population variation at the ASPM and microcephalin loci will be linked to a specific mental ability

- A Chinese research team will discover that the face recognition module in the human brain includes a hardwired capacity to recognize differences in skin tone (for both luminosity and coloration)

- It will be found that certain STDs modify the behavior of their human hosts.

- Certain sexual fetishes will be linked to behavioral manipulation by a variety of vaginal yeast.

- North Korea will deliver an ultimatum to South Korea. Renounce multiculturalism or else! No one will take the threat seriously.

- The stock market will reach record highs. People will think that a new bout of prosperity is just around the corner. Almost no one will notice the ominous rise in food prices.

Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species—if separate species we be—for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world. If we knew what we are, we should do as Sir Arthur Jermyn did; and Arthur Jermyn soaked himself in oil and set fire to his clothing one night.

Oh, come on. This is just ridiculous. At least give a teaser: the Beijing Genomics Institute IQ study Steve Hsu is participating in (and which has already found some IQ gene variants, he says) is going to release its results? Ashkenazi selection data? Nine times out of ten when you announce forthcoming SEKRIT SCIENCE it's by way of the Cochran-Harpending-Hawks clique, so it's safe to assume it's one of their pet projects.

Thanks for the update! I love all the new human science being developed. As I am sure most are aware, Jonathan Haidt wrote that there would be a lot of new evidence for behavioral differences between ethnic groups, that would be coming very soon.

The problem with the Neanderthal interbreeding issue is that everyone in the press seems to believe that it morally ascendant to lie and/or be obscure.

We learn that there are about 1 to 4 percent of our genes that come from Neanderthals. But since these are the same people who told us that we share 98%+ of our genes with chimpanzees, what does this mean? Was that base pairs not genes?

How does this kind of gene counting relate to haplotype distances?

There are only about 20K to 25K genes in humans. That's not very many genes - maybe a few as 200 are therefore from Neanderthals - or maybe as many as a thousand. Are these active protein coding genes? If so, 1000 would seem to be quite a lot.

It would be helpful if someone would express the differences between say sub-Saharan blacks with those Chinese who do so well on the tests in terms of gene differences. I'm guessing perhaps 100 to 300 genes or around half of the Neanderthal contribution to Europeans. I don't expect to see this kind of analysis in The New York Times.

Neanderthals had bigger brains than modern humans. This could have been a domestication phenomenon e.g. wolves have bigger brains than dogs. Or it might be something else. In any case I don't have much faith that brain gene discoveries will be reported candidly.

Now that the federal government has assumed the responsibility for policing the web, where will we go for this kind of information?

"It's obviously about introgression with some other archaic Homo species."

http://preview.tinyurl.com/39noyjo

H/T Razib Khan

"The latest analysis of the nuclear genome of the (Denisova) hominid and morphology of a tooth from the same specimen suggests a different story...

On this basis, the Denisovanes seem to have been a group of hominids who shared a common origin with the ancient Neanderthals, but later had a different evolution. Unlike the Neanderthals, the Denisovans not contribute to all Eurasian genes today.

However, appear to be closely related to modern populations in Melanesia, a region of Oceania, which suggests that there was interbreeding with the antepsados of the Melanesians. In fact, the current Melanesians are between 4% and 6% of the genetic material Denisovanes extinguished. The discovery of Denisovanes south of Siberia suggests that this group occupied much of Asia during the late Pleistocene - about 50,000 years ago."

It would be interesting to know whether than 4%-6% works out in addition to the Neanderthal ancestry shared by all Out of Africa populations. If Melanesian groups have an uptick of ancestry which is relatively Neandertal similar then the "problem" of Neandertal admixture implausibly being uniform across Eurasia might be resolved.

Steve gets his science info from the usual suspects. I imagine they found an introgressed Neanderthal gene that does something useful.

"Serious about any of those relating to STDs and fetishes, Peter?"

There is already evidence that vaginal yeast modifies the sexual behavior of its female host. It seems to me logical that the same microbe would try to modify the behavior of the regular male partner. I'll elaborate on my reasoning in one of my posts ...

it won't be big news, but it might be important in the HBD world. i mean, the majority of nobel science prize level work is not considered big news, so this won't be either. this will be less big than the discovery that one type of bacteria can metabolize arsenic.

"A Chinese research team will discover that the face recognition module in the human brain includes a hardwired capacity to recognize differences in skin tone"

haha wtf. i'll eat my own expensive running shoes if this happens. i need these shoes too, have to put on 20 miles a week at least, which sucks in the winter.

haven't seen an important contribution in that field from chinese researchers...ever, as far as i can tell.

i do think it was hilarious this year how the google PR team is trying to take credit for inventing "the self driving car" when it actually has been in development for a long time, a decade at least, before google contributed anything. i was there when sebastian thrun won the DARPA grand challenge.

also dumb: the US army's new XM25 grenade rifle. they wasted over 10 years developing that thing. was supposed to be connected to a rifle before they realized that was stupid. the french abandoned this project a long time ago when they figured out you needed a grenade of at least 30mm, and the US grenade is...25mm. it was actually 20mm when they started. i think only south korea has a similar weapon.

The BBC have jus issued a news story about 'Denisovans' - a name given to a 'primitive type of man' (named after a Siberian cave system apparently) and the fact that their DNA has been analysed. Apparently 3 or 4 distinctive subspecies of man existed in those times (neaderthals, hobbits, denisovans) and Denisovan gene sequences are found in modern Papuans, but no one else.A full write up is in 'Nature' magazine - science's temple of high priests. 'Out of Africa' is seriously challenged.

Well, there it is, nuclear genome from Denisova cave hominid. Hawks comments on his blog. The paper is here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7327/full/nature09710.html

And, sure enough, some modern humans carry some of these genes. Now back to what Peter points out: what, if anything, is useful about genes from Neandertals and/or Denisovans? Sounds like Hawks is working on this very question.

I'd guess it's today's article in Nature about the draft genome of a new Homo species ("Denisovans"); it's a previously unknown sibling to H. neanderthalis, and there's evidence of its having inbred with the ancestors of modern Melanesians.

So are these Denisovans ancestors of all Australoids? Are they the reason that deep-desert Aborigines look so different from all other humans? I posted on this blog wondering about that many years ago!

I think we may be starting to see the answer to my query back then: Why are the Khoi-San, the "world's oldest human race", so very different from the Australoids, who have been in Australia ca 60,000 years.

From Peter Frost: "There is already evidence that vaginal yeast modifies the sexual behavior of its female host. It seems to me logical that the same microbe would try to modify the behavior of the regular male partner"

Let me guess: increased sex drive?

In my teens I was prone to stubborn sinus infections which always led to treatment with antibiotics which frequently led to yeast infections which usually led to my not telling my mother at the first sign of it for fear I'd have to go to the doctor and have "that awful exam." After dilly dallying around, hoping against hope it would go away by itself (just sheer denial, I realized), I'd give in because the itching, burning, and other noxious effects of a yeast infection were worse than the pelvic exam itself.

So, let me guess: I do believe I felt an increased horniness in the throes of said infection, stupid as that sounds. I know the vulva were swollen from the infection, and I suppose the clitoris was as well so maybe this accounts for the increased tendency to arousal.

Perhaps sexual activity is increased by Miss Yeast Infection? Then, the infection is passed to the male who, in turn, is hornier as well?

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